


Babs The Vampire Slayer

by warmestbloggerever



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Buffy The Vampire Slayer Fusion, Gen, Multimedia, POV Barbara Gordon, POV Dick Grayson, Vignettes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:13:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28462932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warmestbloggerever/pseuds/warmestbloggerever
Summary: Barbara is the Slayer, Dick is a Watcher (In Training), and, well. Gotham trulyisdoomed.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6





	Babs The Vampire Slayer

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theragingstorm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theragingstorm/gifts).



> Wrote this for theragingstorm's birthday.... which was back in April. Better late than never right?
> 
> Anyhow, she encouraged me to post this here. Hope you enjoy!

**Beginning**

  


-

"Seriously, Bruce. If Watchers from like, the 23rd century will have to read our diaries, then maybe we should at least attempt to make it fun for them to read."

"This is a register of our work, not a stand-up comedy session. Please take it seriously."

"I _do_ take it seriously." Restless, Dick leaped off the counter he'd been sitting on, which turned out to be not smart, since he couldn't bounce his legs standing, so what the hell was he supposed to do with his body now? "Cause I've actually _had_ to read 200-year-old diaries, and they're _torture_. I'm just thinking of our future colleagues' well-being, Bruce."

"Excuse me," someone said. It was years of training that allowed him to not show his startle. Judging from Bruce's wide eyes – well, for _him_ – he was surprised as well.

It was a girl. No, wait. It was _her_. The Slayer. Looking at them as if she was done with this non-conversation already. And wearing _incredibly_ unpractical clothes for combat. _And_ her bright red hair would be a beacon sign if she kept it down like that, framing her increasingly irritated freckled face.

"Oh, uh, yeah?" Dick said.

"I'm the transfer student. I'm Barbara Gordon? Principal Finger told me I should get copies of my books here." She wasn't arrogant, exactly, but her request was given with so much firmness that it sounded like a demand.

"Right, of course." That was Bruce, moving into action while Dick kept staring.

He swiftly compiled a pile of textbooks while Barbara and Dick tried to pretend the silence wasn't awkward as hell. When their gazes accidentally met, he gave her a short, clearly uncomfortable smile, which, to his surprise, she responded. So, despite the air of superiority, she _could_ be affected by basic human awkwardness. That was something Dick wouldn't have expected from the Slayer either.

"Here you go," Bruce said, setting the pile on the library counter with a _thud_.

"Thanks," Barbara said in a flat voice.

"Do you need help carrying them?" Bruce offered, which received such a glacial glare from Barbara Gordon that Dick actually lowered his eyes just seeing it as a third party.

She smiled, very sweetly, in a way that suggested she was thinking of good places to hide his body.

"I can handle it." She proceeded to take the entire pile as if it weighted as much as a cloud, looking at Bruce the entire time. She averted her gaze with finality only when turning to go back to actually populated areas of the school, not looking back.

When she and her ice gaze were gone, Dick let out the breath he'd been holding so as not to be noticed.

Dick broke the silence first.

"I like her."

"...So do I," Bruce said after a moment of hesitation.

"When are we recruiting her?"

"It's taken care of. The Slayer manual is among those books. She shall be back shortly, and the training shall begin," which was such an over-dramatic sentence that all thoughts of the Slayer vanished in favor of a need to call Alfred to make fun of Bruce again.

-

She _was_ back soon. At the end of the school day, in fact. Her high-heeled boots made each of her quick steps seem purposeful, if her angry face wasn't enough.

She didn't let them speak.

"Look here, _sir_ ," her voice was low and disdainful as she looked Bruce dead in the eye. "I don't need your help or your training or your rules. I don't work for you, any of you, and I'll be damned before I let some random old man dictate my life."

Dick was too astonished to even begin to formulate an answer, but Bruce didn't seem to have that problem. Much.

"Miss—Gordon, I—understand you're struggling—"

Barbara narrowed her eyes at him, tapping her shoe on the floor impatiently, but she let him speak.

"But we are employees of the Council, just like you."

Dick knew this was wrong thing to say immediately.

"Our role," he rushed to amend Bruce's speech, "is to help the Slayer on her journey. To help her defeat the forces of Evil," he recited. Babs was now looking at him, more calculating than angry, which was a good sign. He forced himself to keep making eye contact. "We all have the same goal, and each... person has their duty. We help you fight, you help humanity."

"I don't need your help," Barbara said, insistent but quietly. Her foot kept its _taptaptap_ on the floor.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Miss Gordon," Bruce spoke again, making Barbara a little angrier and Dick a little more nervous. "But you were transferred because of an—incident, at your old school."

Barbara said nothing, which was answer enough.

"I think," Bruce continued, calm, "That it would be beneficial to everyone if we aided each other."

Barbara considered. The _taptaptap_ stopped. The silence in the library was deafening.

"I'll think about it," she said finally, and turned to leave before they could say anything else.

Dick let out a deep breath. He could interpret Barbara's answer for what it really was – a yes.

-

September

Watching Barbara and Bruce interact was always interesting. Mostly because she never listened to him.

"I'm not a _puppet_ for you to control, Bruce. What the hell," she was shouting. Part of Dick was afraid someone would hear them and come investigate. A librarian in padded armor, his adopted son, and a student who had clearly been hitting the targets Bruce was holding did _not_ make for the most easily explainable image.

But, the other part of Dick reasoned, no one in this school used the library anyways.

"Your moves are not practical," Bruce was saying, "stop showing off and be quicker."

"Stop being a hard-ass and I will."

Dick laughed quietly, going back to his textbook and trying to focus on it. Juggling high school with Watcher (In Training) duties was not as easy as he had thought it would be. He wondered how Babs managed. Maybe he would ask her sometime.

-

October

Bruce was absent from patrol tonight, as he had a "private but urgent matter to attend to".

"I bet he's having digestive problems," Babs pondered. She was sitting beside him on their usual rock in the cemetery, defacing the Slayer Handbook under poor lighting. He would have called her out on it, except a) it would be for nothing, and b) he had done the same to his Watcher Handbook after Mr. Moore spent three hours yelling at him for training for combat like a Slayer.

"I bet it's something more simplistic. Maybe he stubbed his toe earlier and now needs some brooding time."

Babs actually laughed at this. For a while, after the Council gave him a formal warning for what they called "excessive budget for irrelevant international communications", Dick had to stop calling Alfred twice a day, and he thought that was the end of him making fun of Bruce. It turned out Barbara was a great partner for that purpose, though.

"Maybe he has poker night with the rest of the Watchers and needs the money to pay for his elaborate Halloween costume."

Dick choked on his own spit at the mental image of Bruce in a blonde wig, mourning about his loneliness and how it was killing him.

"Maybe he was bit by a werewolf and is hiding his transformation from us for the moment."

"Maybe he has a date with Miss Kyle."

This made Dick short-circuit.

"...I'm just messing with you." Barbara said, clearing her throat and looking away. Any other Watcher would say she was just monitoring the cemetery, searching for possible trouble. But, by now, Dick _knew_ Barbara enough to know that, when she was _actually_ messing with someone, she wouldn't say it out loud. So the fact that she _was_ indicated she was lying. This wasn't her patrolling; this was her averting her gaze.

Dick found his voice again. "Oh my god, Bruce is seeing a human _woman_?"

"Would you rather she be a creature of the night?"

"Oh my _God_ , this is unprecedented."

Beside him, Barbara snorted, but Dick wasn't making fun anymore, he was being serious. Bruce was completely devoted to his work, to the Mission. Even Barbara, who only knew him for a couple of months, knew that by now.

"He must really like her," Dick said finally.

"Yeah," Barbara smiled at him – not smug or bitter like most of her smiles, but a genuine one. "I think he must."

-

November

Seeing Babs fight vampires did something weird to Dick.

He, as a Watcher In Training/apprentice, had seen videos of Slayers fighting, of course. Had analyzed them extensively and handed in reports on how the Slayers' techniques could have been improved and essays on how their tiniest mistakes could foreshow what would lead them to their deaths. Had copied them as well, in secret, as best as he could. His body was used to heights and falls, so using his strength to fight was foreign to him.

Babs made the battle feel more like what he'd been used to once, though.

Babs liked to use her upper strength a lot, as well as having a penchant for slight gymnastics. She'd once told him she had been a dancer, before all this, and it did look like a dance. Barbara moved with her breath, with a grace he never would imagine seeing used to kill demons. The hours of tapes could never fully capture that watching a Slayer was a privilege.

But maybe it wasn't a Slayer thing, though. Maybe it was a _Babs_ thing. The way she created a little bubble of chaos, controlled solely by her. Barbara, grinning arrogantly and covered in sweat, fully aware of her power as vampire dust fell around her.

Whatever force that had Chosen _her_ had been right.

"Did you do the report?" Babs asked, coming closer to take a peak on Dick's empty pad. It took him a while to come back to real life, where he had a real assignment to hand in.

"Uhhhh... haven't got enough yet, no."

Babs merely shrugged. "'Kay." And moved on to another area of the cemetery.

-

December

December brought snow, but not a winter wonderland because Gotham was too dirty and crowded for that. It brought more work for Babs in the form of vampires leaving their hiding places sooner and school finals. It brought the traumatizing sight of Bruce and Ms Kyle acting like teenagers in the locker room of the library. Most importantly, it brought Dinah Lance.

Dinah appeared in their lives by stepping into the library (alarming in itself) and asking to speak to the Slayer, which was so baffling that not even Bruce could speak for a moment. Babs reacted first, making a stake appear out of nowhere in her hand and casually responding with a "'Sup."

Dinah watched for a moment, then smiled.

"Cool," she said, "I kinda need your help."

-

What transpired between Babs and Dinah during that talk was known only to them, but they bonded in a way Dick had never seen Babs do, so there was definitely _something_ up with Dinah. No one normal would hit it off with the three of them—Bruce included.

She was visibly older than them. Okay, not _visibly_. Her face just had less softness to it. Her smile was a little sharper; bitter even—a little like Babs in that regard. Independent, private; but also easygoing. Dick was surprised to find how much he liked calling her a friend.

Oh, and also, she was a werewolf.

-

January

**Middle**

It started to end like this: descending into the crypt. Following the script carefully laid out for her to meet her end at the hands of a moving corpse. Being so scared that she couldn't hear beyond the tinning in her ear and couldn't move or breath or think. It had been a while since she’d felt fear like _this_.

Darkness fell over her, and it hurt everywhere.

But she could still feel her own heart. Each breath burned her chest, but her body couldn’t stop pulling air. She couldn’t even remember her own name; all she knew was pain. All she knew was that she was alone in this dark pit, and blood was pouring out of her and no one was coming– because– because she was supposed to save everyone and not the other way around and it didn’t matter if she cried now because no one was coming and she was so afraid, so afraid. She couldn’t breathe, and crying hurt but everything hurt, so what was the point? She just wanted this to end, _please_. She wanted the darkness to fall over her and take her away from the knowledge of this pain and this fear. That’s all she wanted. She just needed it to end, _please_.

And darkness did come, but not oblivion.

In the dark, she could still hear the screams.

-

There was light.

After however much time she’d spend in the dark, the light shyly tilting in through the one window in the hospital room was still too much. The tinning in her ears gave way to the beeping of a machine, to the _drop-drop-drop_ of something above her, to demanding voices outside. To sirens.

She had one perfect moment where she didn’t remember anything at all, before she fully came back.

-

The Hellmouth was open.

She had gone to defeat the Master, and she knew it would be her death. _The Master will bring the end of the Slayer_. She had not cried in front of her dad or of Sarah. She had not allowed herself the gift of saying goodbye. She had put one step in front of the other. She had grasped one last glimpse of the world before stepping into a darkness so absolute, it was as if the sun had never existed.

But something went wrong, and she hadn’t died, and the Hellmouth was open. The screams she’d heard in the dark—those hadn’t been only hers. It was the entire city she’d failed.

And her _legs_ –

She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t fight. She couldn’t run, no matter if it was away or toward danger. She heard the screams of her city every time she closed her eyes and there was

nothing

she

could

do.

-

And she couldn’t even tell her dad.

That was probably the worst part. No. No, it wasn’t the worst. But it killed her all the same.

Her dad, who she’d always seen taking charge, taking action, was now at a loss for words. He cried when telling her about—about her legs, and it was silent, just tears rolling down, and she didn’t know what to say, and she couldn’t _tell_ him. She couldn’t tell him that the city was now no man’s land because she failed, and that they, the police, the people, wouldn’t be able to save themselves alone because it was her job and she couldn’t even, she couldn’t even do that anymore and she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t help him. She couldn’t–

-

Ever since she woke up her mind was scrambled, mute. She too was at a loss for words, she supposed. Her thoughts never reached their end, hitting a block before she could truly understand the world she lived in now. It was like a nightmare, and her mind was protecting her from the realization that there was no waking up. There was just—living this.

What almost made her break was how little she’d seen Dick and Dinah ever since she woke up. Because they couldn’t. Because they were out there every night, fighting a fight too big for two people. And before, she could count on them to be _here_. But if she couldn’t now, then that meant this truly was a different world.

And her father never left her side—another sign that the world she’d known had ended. At the time the city needed him, Commissioner Gordon, the most, he was here. Quiet and crying and showing his love for her in every way he knew how.

She didn’t know what she could do.

-

It was the Council that broke her.

She had never met any of them, Bruce and Dick excluded. The Council, until then, had been too distant to occupy space in her mind.

When the two strange men entered her room, a flicker of her old instincts flared up in her chest, soon extinguished by the absolute apathy serving as a dam against her fear.

If she had been more present, more herself, she would have realized what was going on sooner. She would have known they arranged this for when her father wasn’t present, for when she was alone.

“Miss Gordon,” the taller one said, a hint of an English accent. They looked out of place with their pressed suits and their combed back hair. Everyone Barbara had seen since opening her eyes looked one bad day away from cracking. “I’m Mr Moore, this is Mr Bolland, representing the Council.”

They waited for her to react. She didn’t.

“We hope you’ve found this accommodation to your taste?” The shorter one, Mr Bolland, asked. It was so obviously not what they were here for that she didn’t even try to answer. She just waited.

“We find ourselves in a unique predicament, Ms Gordon,” Mr Moore said in the same level, formal tone. His partner pretended to look around, taking in the room as if it had anything interesting to show.

Mr Moore waited.

“Interesting how?” she asked.

“The prophecy, for one, took us by surprise, wouldn’t you agree?” he continued. “It had been written that the Slayer would meet her end at the Master’s hands, but that the Master would also fall. Evidently, neither happened.”

Something inside her cracked.

“The Council has been puzzled at this– development.” She didn’t think she was imagining the way his eyes strayed to her legs for a fraction of a second. “We have been forced to admit that, perhaps, the prophecy had been miscalculated.”

He paused again. She couldn’t understand what he was getting at; the haze in her mind wouldn’t let her.

“Miscalculated?”

“Yes,” he seemed pleased with her participation, as small as it was. “Our working theory is that, perhaps, you were not the Slayer the prophecy was referring to. Indeed you– were defeated.” His glance at her legs was intentional now. “Yet, the Master was not.”

The first strands of _feeling_ crept up her chest, her neck. She took in the calm lines on his face, the lilt of his voice, studying them under a new light. Her pulse quickened; it would have been imperceptible, if not for the fact that it’d been so long, too long, since she felt something akin to this—to instinct. _Heat_. Her body preparing to fight.

“And so we find ourselves in this predicament,” he concluded. In the silence that followed, the faint noises of frantic doctors and of sirens outside reverberated. “Tell me, Miss Gordon. How do you see ourselves getting out of it?”

She _didn’t._

She suspected he could read that answer on her face, try as she might to hide it. That had been the truth she had not dared to let out, because– because it was _too much_.

Because she didn’t want anyone else to know, and she didn’t want to know, herself.

“I would like to hear you, Miss Gordon,” his voice was calm still, patient.

 _Drop-drop-drop_ above her. Light tilting shyly through the window. Sirens outside.

She whispered the truth, “There’s nothing I can do.”

He nodded once, but otherwise didn’t say anything for a while.

Mr Moore took the liberty to walk around the room and look out the small window in the room, the one too tall for her to see anything from where she was lying down. None of them said anything as Barbara was ripped from the apathetic sleep state she’d been in, all by her own words. By that one small truth. _There was nothing she could do_.

“This truly is bigger than all of us,” Mr Moore started saying again. She could barely hear him over the static in her ears, over her trying to conceal how desperate her breathing was, because she was breathing fast but the air in the room wasn’t filling her lungs right and it _hurt_. “Truly, it is the role the Slayer alone can fill for us.”

This pierced through Barbara’s panic. The confusion was almost welcome.

“I can’t fill it.” She barely sounded like herself, her voice weak and lost.

“Yes,” he agreed, waiting.

“I’m sorry.”

“There’s no need to apologize, Miss Gordon. Defeat is the fate of all Slayers. It is just inconvenient that yours has taken this– incomplete shape.”

This half-death. Unable to fight, unable to run. Stuck. _Incomplete_.

The heat in her body took the form of shame, weighting her chest down so fully that she couldn’t breathe.

It was all her worst thoughts, coming out of his mouth; proving that the things she had kept in the recesses of her mind were known to all.

Distantly, she realized she was crying.

“And it has left us stuck,” he continued, “in a way that the prophecy can’t come to fruition. The line of Slayers can’t continue, do you understand? If the only fighter at our disposal cannot fight, that poses a problem.”

Which was so obvious that she wanted to shout at him that he wasn’t a child, but she couldn’t breathe, much less shout.

“And you, yourself, has agreed that this is a problem beyond your reach, that you could do nothing.”

“Stop.” She needed him to _stop_.

His face didn’t change. It was still calm, collected, as he finally delivered what he came here to say.

“Miss Gordon, the Council’s official position is that a new Slayer should be called into action immediately. You served your duty well in your time, but it has come to its end.”

And Barbara–

Barbara was awake for the first time since she opened her eyes.

The grief, the pain. the _fear_ ; the way that Bruce couldn’t look her in the eyes, and the absence of her friends as they risked their lives as she had. Sarah, caring for the Gordons in a way no one ever did.

Her father, always by her side.

It all registered deep into her, and she let herself feel the love as well as the pain. The fear as well as the resentment. And above those was the rage.

The rage was nothing new. It was always simmering under her skin, ready to surface with a spark; always in the back of her mind, where she carefully put it away. The rage she'd inherited from her namesake. The rage she never knew whether or not it was justified, and was afraid of the answer.

It was the anger that started forming from the moment her mother left them even when she still lived in the house. The anger at being alone even among her loved ones, because she, alone, was the warrior, and what could she, alone, do to rid this town of the rot embedded in it? The choked fear from the first moment she understood that being a Slayer came with an expiration date, and that there was nothing, absolutely nothing, she could do about it.

The rage came in horrible thoughts and words she tried really hard not to say. She didn't want to be capable of terrible things.

She let it out.

“If you’re asking me to quietly remove myself from the picture so you can send the next girl to her death, I would suggest rethinking your position.”

Neither of the two men expected _that_.

It was almost a relief, being awake, feeling alive like this, even if everything she felt right now was bad. Her muscles were taut with the urge to fight, and of course, stuck to this bed she couldn’t do much. It still was better than the numbness.

“If you’re so incompetent that you fuck up calculating the most important prophecy of the century, then I’m not sure I trust your judgment on my life. Take a good look at this town, _sir_. You think one girl, alone, will restore it to peace?”

“I—”

“ _I’m not done_ ,” she hissed. Her mind was filled with the memory of her first kill–the trickling realization that this was _real_. The way she looked in the mirror that night, and the way she was completely, absolutely alone.

The endless pain of the darkness, and the screams she couldn’t forget.

“I am not sending another unsuspecting girl to die alone. It’s that simple. Because that’s what it _is_. So either come up with something else, or get out and let me fix this.”

Between the silence of the room, distant sirens and shouts echoed.

“I understand this is a trying time–”

“You really, _really_ don’t.”

The egotistical part of herself was pleased to see the lines of his face contorted in agitation.

She was less smug when they rearranged into faux calm again.

“What is your plan, then?”

Her momentary silence was telling. She gritted her teeth.

“My plan does not involve what happened to me, to happen to anyone else. That is a line I will not cross.”

“In other words, you don’t know.”

His calm was enraging in face of her fury.

“Not yet, no.” She was probably speaking too loudly. She didn’t care. “But you don’t know either, none of you do. What the hell is _your_ plan? To keep doing this shit to young girls while you sit in your high tower and watch? _I won’t let you_. This changes now.”

This rattled them.

“Miss Gordon, it would be in your best interest to remember your place and your vow to do what’s best for this world.”

And because she was finally awake, and simmering, she laughed.

“My _place_? Oh, wow. I’m _shaking_. Yes, I’ll do the best for this world, which is not the same as _letting you dictate what that is_.”

“Understand that the Council’s official position has not changed.”

She almost punched the mattress.

Instead, she held onto the bars of the bed and pushed herself up.

“Neither has mine,” she said. “If you intend to make me ‘remove myself from the picture’, you will have to do it yourselves. And just a reminder, _gentlemen_ , that you are the least scary things I’ve defeated.”

She crushed the bar in her fist, and moved her hand so they could see it.

Neither of them moved closer.

“Very well,” Moore’s voice was unsteady. “I see you are not in the right mind for negotiations.”

If she wasn’t so angry, she would have laughed again. That was such a typical response, trying to get the last word while acting like she was being unreasonable. Her mother had done that enough that it didn’t faze Barbara anymore.

“No,” her voice was warm; fierce, awake. “I guess I’m not. Now, I need you to leave. I have physical therapy at two.”

**New Beginnings**


End file.
